by Dana Milbank
First published 2010
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank examines the meteoric rise of Fox News personality Glenn Beck in this sharp political analysis. Beck commands three million daily viewers while promoting fringe theories about death panels, FEMA concentration camps, and government health insurance for dogs. Milbank argues that Beck traffics in conspiracies and internet rumors that mainstream figures avoid, making him the most visible leader of antigovernment conservatives despite lacking any ideological background. The author suggests Beck's right-wing persona may be calculated performance art from a former shock jock without college credentials. Milbank traces how Beck gained more public admiration than the Pope according to Gallup polling, all while weeping on air and manufacturing daily controversies. The book exposes Beck as a showman who damages patriotism's reputation through theatrical outrage and fact-free political commentary that captures America's cultural vitriol in 2010.
Genres: american, biography-memoir, 21st-century, journalism, current-affairs, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Washington
Period: 2010
261 pages · Hardcover · Doubleday